‘If we’d said no, they’d have taken it, for all that.’
‘But we didn’t say no. We co-operated and did all we could to help, so they owe us a land girl.’
‘I suppose so …’ Helen Sutton was not entirely convinced, but Julia would never change, would always rush in without too much thought.
‘By the way,’ Helen called after her daughter’s retreating back, ‘Nathan wants to see you about something. He’s in the library.’
And they could but try, she acknowledged as the door banged noisily shut. Yet for all that, she hoped that the young lady, if ever she arrived, didn’t come complete with bright red lipstick and painted nails to match. Catchpole wouldn’t like that at all.
The telephone rang shrilly and she heard Julia crossing the hall to answer it. She knew it was good news, even before the door flew open and a flushed and smiling Julia announced, ‘Drew’s coming on leave! Next Thursday, for ten days, he said!’ She gathered her mother into her arms, hugging her fiercely. ‘Isn’t it wonderful? Must just tell Nathan, then I’ll give Alice a ring!’
She was gone in a flurry of delight before Helen could even ask when her grandson would be arriving and if he wanted meeting at Holdenby station.
Then she smiled and picked up the framed photograph of a young sailor from the table beside her chair. His hair was cut much too short, but he smiled back at her exactly as Drew had always done.
Drew. Sir Andrew Sutton, really – Giles and Alice’s son. Coming home on Thursday; home to Rowangarth.
But Thursday was all of five days away – a hundred and twenty long, slow hours away. However was she to endure them?
Never in her life had Agnes Clitherow been so glad to see Rowangarth. A feeling of homecoming wrapped around her and almost made her regret what she and her cousin Margaret had decided, but she shook such thoughts from her head, picked up her cases and walked, straight-backed as ever, to the kitchen door. As Rowangarth’s housekeeper she had a right to enter by the front, but to do so would necessitate the ringing of the doorbell and that, at half-past six in the morning, was simply not done.
‘Miss Clitherow!’ Tilda gasped at the sight of the dishevelled lady who leaned against the door jamb. ‘Oh, come in, do!’ She guided her to a chair, all the while clucking and soothing as the occasion seemed clearly to demand, then set the kettle to boil on the gas stove. ‘A good strong cup is what you need. Been travelling all night, have you?’
‘Oh, Tilda!’ She had indeed made the overnight journey, which from Oban to Glasgow had passed without too much discomfort. But from Glasgow to York! ‘Never take the night train!’
Packed to overflowing it had been with soldiers with respirators and kitbags, airmen with kitbags and respirators and a great many sailors with the added encumbrance of rolled and lashed hammocks and all of them sleeping and snoring not only where they ought to have been, but in corners, corridors and anywhere space was to be found.
‘We were held up at Newcastle for almost an hour and if it hadn’t been for an ATS girl, I don’t know what I’d have done – you know what I mean …?’
No need to go into intimate detail, but the resourceful young lady had left the train, marched up to the engine driver and loudly threatened, ‘Now listen ’ere, mate! If you start your bleedin’ engine before me and this lady have found somewhere to have a widdle, I’ll burst yer!’ To which the driver replied that it looked as if they’d have time to sit there for the rest of the night and make their Wills if they were so minded, before he got the green light to move.
So embarrassing it had been and surely obvious to everyone awake that they were about to search the blacked-out railway station for the ladies’ room!
‘But wasn’t there a lavvy on the train?’ Tilda quickly sized up the cause of the upset.
‘There were several, and all of them filled with luggage.’ If she could have reached one, that was. They’d had the greatest difficulty getting off the train and they had struggled and pushed their way back to their compartment only to find their seats occupied by two burly sergeants who gazed at the ATS girl’s single stripe and told her where she could go. Pulling rank, Miss Clitherow later discovered it was called, and bleedin’ sergeants were always doing it!
‘And the train was dirty and blacked out.’ Except for the odd blue light bulb, that was, and if she never set foot on a train again for the entire duration of hostilities, it wouldn’t bother her one iota. And that, she supposed was something of a contradiction in view of the decision she had made.
‘Never you mind, Miss Clitherow, dear. Just take off your hat and wash your hands, then I’ll pour you a cup.’ Tilda had never seen the housekeeper so distraught, not in all her thirty-odd years at Rowangarth. ‘And then I’d get a bath, if I were you, and pop straight into bed.’
‘Oh, no!’ A bath maybe, but she must see her ladyship as soon as maybe, thank her for the time off, then explain the position fully, a thought which brought tears to her eyes and Tilda to place a comforting arm around her shoulders – a liberty she would once never have dreamed of taking – and tell her that she was home and safe now, and must never go away again. Which immediately caused the tears to flow faster and for Miss Clitherow to murmur, amid gasps, ‘Tilda! Please don’t say that!’
The tears came again when she and her ladyship were comfortably seated in the small parlour, windows wide to the July afternoon. It was her ladyship’s fault, the housekeeper reluctantly admitted, her being so genuinely pleased to see her back from her bereavement.
‘We have missed you, Miss Clitherow,’ Helen smiled. ‘It’s so good to see you again. Julia tells me your journey was very uncomfortable, but never mind – you are home now.’
‘Oh dear, Lady Helen, but I’m not you see. Well, not for so very much longer.’
And she had gone on to explain how her cousin Margaret – the elder sister of Elizabeth, whose funeral Miss Clitherow had gone to attend – had begged her, almost, to leave domestic service and spend her remaining years close to kin amid the beautiful – and safe – hills and lochs of Scotland. ‘It’s time for you to retire, stop working for the gentry, Agnes, my dear. And it’s so peaceful and quiet, here.’
Her cousin was right, of course. Apart from the blackout, there was little sign of the war in the tiny village between Oban and Connel. Just sight of the ferry from Achnacroish to Oban and the odd merchant ship making for the Sound of Mull. Certainly there were no aircraft armed with bombs and bullets, their wings heavy with fuel, struggling to take off. The bombers from RAF Holdenby Moor worried Agnes Clitherow. She flinched when they roared overhead, awoke with a start when, in the early hours of the morning, they returned from raids over Germany.
‘We are safer here on the west coast. If the invasion comes it will be from the south or the east,’ Margaret had urged and she was right without a doubt. Hitler’s divisions occupied France, Belgium and the Netherlands, had ports and aerodromes there in plenty. ‘Mark my words, Agnes, Hitler will not do the obvious. They are waiting for him to invade the south coast of England but in my opinion he’ll land in Yorkshire or Northumberland. He’s a sly one!’
‘Not for so very much longer?’ Helen’s words cut into the housekeeper’s troubled thoughts. ‘You aren’t ill, Miss Clitherow?’
‘No, milady, but I am getting older, and my cousin has offered me my own room. It’s so peaceful there in Scotland, and safe somehow.’
‘And you don’t feel safe here at Rowangarth?’ Helen Sutton knew how much her housekeeper